Castle in the Air
by Stars of Artemis
Summary: It's what happens when the power becomes greater than the responsibility, when no one is watching the watchers. When the guardians that stand between us and the dark become like fire; too intense and hot to touch, too wild to contain...until everything is consumed in uncontrollable flames.
1. Flame

**Trinity Scott.**

That was what her passport said, in bold black letters for all the world to see, as official as the familiar stamp on the back of a silver quarter.

Piper sighed and stowed it back in her jacket pocket.

Trinity was just such a mouthful. She honored her mother's wishes to name her after her best friend, Trini Kwan, but honestly, couldn't it have been her middle name? That was what she went by for as long as she could remember, anyways. Piper, not Trinity. Piper, Piper, Piper.

It had been a long plane ride.

Technically, she was supposed to be here to meet Uncle Tommy (he wasn't really her uncle, but that was what she always called him- jeez, it took her five years till she found out he wasn't actually related to her) to be staying with him for a week. Her parents needed some vacation time in Hawaii, and she hadn't seen Tommy in two years since he moved out here. So she had taken a little plane ride to the only airport around- Turtle Cove- and planned on meeting him after catching her next flight to his town.

Tommy seemed to have completely forgotten about her good sense for finding trouble if it was in a ten-mile radius of her, but that was okay with her. So long as she got just a few hours away from her overprotective father, it would all be worth it.

Jason could be such a killjoy.

But that was another reason why Piper loved fieldtrips, vacations, going anywhere where no one knew her name- or more importantly, her father's. But then again, it was almost impossible to find someplace where no one knew her father's name. Or her mother's, for that matter- Kimberly was quite famous as well in the Power Ranger world.

She was lucky, and she knew it. No one else ever had been born with two Power Ranger parents- especially not with _Mighty Morphin _Power Ranger parents (Mighty Morphin was a big deal- first modern Power Rangers ever), and especially not with the _first _red ranger as their father. Almost everyone was dragged into the Power Ranger world of orgs and battles and sacrifice and power by fate- Piper had been born into it because of her parents. By the time she was five, she had met and knew the real name of almost every single 'notable' Power Ranger out there because of Jason, Kimberly, and Uncle Tommy.

And no one, ever, payed _her _any attention.

Oh, she wasn't a spotlight-hogging brat. Piper was just fine with being ignored (though not exactly a fan of it). She just wished they payed attention to her for _her_- Piper didn't even really have her own name (it was Trini's). She was Jason's daughter. Kimberly's daughter. Jason's daughter, Kimberly's, Jason's, Jason's, Jason's-

Not. Piper.

She was living in the shadow of someone else. And maybe she was only thirteen and too young to be soul-searching or trying to make her own name, but she was sick of only being known for her parents, never having her own identity.

_How much it must suck_, she realized, _to be George Washington's kid. Or King Tut's. Or Cleopatra's. You would go down in history, recognized and tagged forever, as being close to or related to someone else. _

Not that Cleopatra had had a daughter- not that she knew of- but still, the sentiment was the same.

Piper sighed.

This was going to be a long week with Uncle Tommy. If Jason was a big deal, Tommy was like- _the _big deal. She was lucky she wasn't _his _daughter, or she'd probably be stuck in his shadow forever.

As walked down the enormous hall with the polished white floors, among the crowds of people, she didn't notice the strange smoke swirling in the shadows against the walls. And she didn't realize that today, trouble might magnetically find her again. And this time, it might go terribly, terribly wrong.

Princess Shayla sat on the rock by the Sacred Fountain, fingers trailing delicately over the cool surface of the water, leaving tiny ripples in their wake. She cocked her head slowly to the side, brown hair tumbling around her shoulders, and watched the beautiful patterns that rippled across the surface of the water, watched as they lapped against the edge of the stone and slowly receded back into stillness.

She was thinking, as usual. Thinking about past days and peaceful times, thinking about the time before the orgs had awakened and brought terror and destruction down upon them all. Thinking about how the Anamarium had once been a part of the Earth, now a story that only existed in fairy tales. And she was saddened by it all.

But a deep peace and sense of purpose lay heavy in her heart, and kept it beating strong. She knew she would never give up- never stop fighting till the Wild Force was disbanded and the Power Ranger gifts were passed to a new generation- and then she would wait with the Zords till their time came again.

She thought longingly of Merrick, and sighed.

_Till our time comes again._

A geyser of water suddenly exploded out of the fountain, bubbling a foot high of water and white spray. Shayla leapt back, startled, and watched in alarm as the fountain slowly dropped back into the surface of the pond. The flat water rippled, a shadow came over its reflective surface, and then a new scene unfolded before her eyes.

A bone-white floor that shined and reflected harsh lights painted the scene before her, a crowd of people moving all over the place. Even as she watched, a tendril of white smoke curled across the vision, floating above the floors. People were pausing, staring, looking around, and then suddenly a bright light- orange, or golden- burned out of the view of her vision, casting the room in a strange red glow. People were screaming, running, the smoke was thickening…

And then the fountain went blank.

Shayla whirled around, eyes wide, hand flying to her throat.

"Rangers!" she cried, hailing them through her necklace. "Another org has risen!"

It started when the smell wafted through the air- thick, sharp, and smoky. The smell of fire. Piper glanced around, but no one else seemd to notice; the babble of the crowd was steady. It wasn't until the scent grew stronger that she realized something was wrong.

Piper paused and looked around, seeing that other people were beginning to notice it too. She glanced down and noticed thick white smoke curling across the floor- and then the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

The smoke wasn't moving like smoke- rising up and rolling to vanish, thick pillars- but like…tendrils of an octopus. Like hands.

One of the hands paused, smoke rolling, contained, and then surged upward, slamming into a passerby's face.

The man shouted and coughed, spluttering, going down on his knees. People everywhere stopped and looked around. The room was getting warmer, Piper noticed- too warm.

That was when the screaming began.

Orange light suddenly spilled into the room, that kind of glow that only comes from a fire. Piper's head snapped up, and she couldn't believe what she was seeing- but then, based on how she grew up, and who her parents were, she could.

A glowing shape crawled into the room, a shape with four legs, a large body, and a long neck ending in a narrow head. A fiery line lashed out behind it- a tail, Piper realized. The thing was made of flames, licking and twisting and wavering in a fearsome form that never remained quite the same. Then it reared up on two legs and slammed back onto the ground, and the flames of its body seemed to explode.

Heat blasted throughout the room. The scream increased tenfold and there was the sound of something cracking- the floor, Piper realized, glancing down. She dropped her suitcase and staggered back as another heat wave blasted her face. People in front of her were running and screaming, trying to get away- any way- from the monster. Piper tried to move, tried to run, tried to remember everything her father and mother had taught her from her training since she was four, but then she caught the creatures eyes.

Two deep depressions in the flames were the eye sockets should have been, and a blinding white flame burned in each with all the intensity of the sun. And they looked at _her_.

And Piper couldn't look away.

The air around the fire-monster was rippling, as if in heat waves, and Piper snapped out of her revere as the air wavered and contracted, and then blasted outward, rippling out like a shock wave to consume the room.


	2. Wild Force

**A/N; **Hope you guys like this! Its my first PR fic, so please review! LOVE reviews. And i changed the first chapter so that Piper doesnt have her suitcase with her...you'll see why soon. Thanks for reading!

* * *

><p>"You're kidding, right?"<p>

Golden sunlight spilled down on the city street, the noise loud, baffling and- as Cole personally thought- obnoxious after being at the Anamarium all morning.

"Sorry, that guy over there just took the last one," said the hotdog guy- about forty and forty pounds overweight. He gestured down the street, and Max turned to glower at the retreating back of a tall businessman wearing a black suit. Then he whirled back around, a pleading light in his eyes.

"You've got to have more!" he said, sounding slightly panicked. "I mean- it's a Thursday- it's a ball game- have you ever been to a ball game without a hotdog?"

"No, lucky you," said the man, scratching the stumble on his face as he peered at something under his cart. "Look, Max, I know you're my biggest customer, but I can't pull another hot dog out of thin air. Sorry, kid. Come back next week."

"But-!"

"Max," snapped Taylor, stepping forward and pulling him away from the cart by the back of his jacket. "Thank you," she apologized to the man, and the group of five walked toward the looming, shadowy stadium.

"Would it kill you to just take a 'no' every once in a while?" asked Taylor. "Look, I'll buy you a hotdog from another stand."

"Murphy's _is _the only one to go to," Danny intoned quietly, coming to Max's rescue. "All the others are…well, you know…"

"Greasy," growled Max.

Cole grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry," he told him. "I'm sure you'll survive till next week. Just think of it as conditioning- _diet _conditioning."

"Did you just call me fat?"

Taylor and Alyssa burst out laughing.

"Well…" trailed off Cole. Max gave an indignant yell and punched him in the arm; Cole grabbed him and pulled him into a headlock, messing up his hair. The five of them made a pretty rowdy crowd, staggering up the steps of the stadium, when Cole's cell phone rang. The sharp trilling chirp cut through the sound of their laughter. Everyone immediately fell silent.

Cole pulled his Growl Phone out of his pocket and flipped it open.

"Hello?" He paused, and then asked, "Where?" The silence became like the calm before a storm; even Max had on his battle-face. "Okay. We'll be there as soon as we can."

Cole snapped the phone shut. "There's an org loose in the airport. We have to move _now_!"

* * *

><p>Piper flung herself through the air and hit the ground rolling, landing safely behind an upturned desk. Her back pressed against a second, righted one, a barrier between her and the fiery monster. Heat blasted through the room, rippling the air that over her head like a heat wave. Her dark hair twisted around her shoulders and she wondered how she was possibly supposed to get out of this mess.<p>

_Tommy __**really **__should have met me here_, she thought, and then an even more dreadful realization hit her- _Dad's never going to let me go anywhere on my own again._

Crap.

A second heat wave followed the first, and Piper shouted and threw her arms over her head, sliding closer to the ground.

This was bad.

Okay, this was _really _bad.

_Crap_.

There was a screeching sound, and then a strange roar that sounded like the roar of flames eating up dry logs and reaching for the sky. Curious, Piper glanced over the edge of the desk- and had no idea what sense to make of what she was seeing.

On one side of the room, the fire-thing was standing with flames wreathing out all around it like a halo. On the other side was the smoke, rolling and rippling across the ground in a silver pool like water. Confusion flooded through Piper- why was the smoke on one side and the fire on the other? There's no smoke without fire, wasn't that how things went?

But then all thought vanished as the smoke rose in a towering pillar in the center, thickening and growing and an acrid, burning smell hit Piper's nose- the smell that had flooded the airport before, only this time she noticed something different about it that she had been too distracted to tell before. The smell reminded her of driving over high bridges towering above rivers, and the smell that flooded the cars as they drove over factories with white pillars constantly puffing out of tall towers like a still picture of flags caught in the wind.

It was the smell of pollution, of power plants- not smoke.

And then the smoke or- whatever it was; smog?- began to change shape, shifting and forming and being still in some places, till it formed a roughly-human shape- if humans were seven feet tall and had two curving horns and a mane of smoke rolling down their backs like a horse's mane.

A light flashed out from the center of the smog and the figure hardened, till it looked like it was made of glass- within which the smog still rolled and twisted like dirty clouds. Fierce yellow eyes shone out from its head, slanted and long. But the mane of smog still remained uncontained, though- like the towers along the river.

Org, Piper thought, panicking. But what about the other creature?

"This is _my _place," hissed the org, rolling its grotesque, crystalline shoulders. "Be gone from here, beast."

The fiery lizard-thing snarled again- a sound like a fire rushing out form a flamethrower.

"I don't know what you are," said the org. "You are ancient, clearly. But so am I, and I'm not competing for ground!"

It rushed forward then, smog-mane rippling, and more smog pouring out from around its footsteps and body.

The other monster reared up, and a jet of fire erupted from its mouth, consuming the space before it in a swirling cyclone of flames. The org screamed and dropped, rolling to try and avoid further burning damage. Then the fire monster closed its mouth and the air contracted around it again, and a short, small wave blasted out from around it- another heat wave- and sent the org flying, sailing over Piper's head and crashing into the baggage claim. Sparks flew from the machine as the org crashed to the floor.

Piper looked at it for a moment, paralyzed in shock, and then decided to make a break for it- when the org staggered up and looked right at her.

"What are _you _looking at, insect?" it bellowed, fury and hate burning in its eyes. It took two steps forward and a crystal-covered saber with more smog rolling in its core shimmered in his hand, raised above his head.

A cracking sound came from the wood of the desk behind Piper's head, and she twisted around, feeling heat on the back of her neck.

The fire lizard-thing had crawled halfway on top of the desk, its front legs planted on the oak, burning claws sinking into the wood and splintering it, leaving black scorch marks wherever it touched as it loomed above her. Piper cried out and scrambled to the side, but her back hit another hard object- the desk she had jumped over to get here- and she couldn't move, watching the flames rolling across the creature's shoulder, couldn't remember what to do, how to fight- and how do you fight fire?

But the thing didn't even look at her, to her shock. It instead lowered its head and roared at the org- really _roared _this time- and that fiery sound made the air in front of it ripple and rumbled in the ground beneath Piper like thunder. The org flinched a few steps back in surprise, hesitating between attacking and fleeing.

"What are you playing at, beast?" it cried in confusion.

Piper glanced between the two- one just a yard away, the other in the middle of the room- and felt overwhelmed, suddenly uncertain of which one she should fear more.

What was going on?

The org crouched, holding his sword like a flashing line in front of him, when several shouts drew everyone's attention to the far end of the room.

Piper looked past the org, and her stomach dropped.

Five people- five brightly clad -_weapon carrying!- _people stood in a fierce formation- the red one was standing on top of the luggage terminal. As if on cue, they all dropped to the ground, slamming it with their hands, and rose back up halfway like animals crouched, about to pounce. "Wild Force!" they proclaimed, each one in a different stance.

Power Rangers.

Good God- she runs into an org, the only active Power Rangers team on Earth, and a strange fire-thing she doesn't know what to think of on the same say. She's setting a new record.

The org turned to fully face them. "Oh, now _you've _shone up, have you?" it growled. Piper's head snapped back as a bright movement caught her attention; the fire-lizard thing whirled around off the desk, splinters flying as the claws on its front paws were yanked free.

"It's over, org!" shouted someone-Piper assumed it was the red ranger, and she turned her head back in time to see the five of them dancing around it, as graceful as dancers and as fierce as soldiers, slashing the org with bright, short sabers.

Sparks flew off it's glasslike-skin like rain, and the org staggered back, the rangers now between him and Piper.

"This isn't over," it growled, staggering back. "For any of you," he added, and Piper had a dreadful feeling it was talking about her.

Then the thing seemed to fall, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been cut into a pool of smog rolling around its feet. The smoke thickened and then surged out of the cracks of the double doors, vanishing outside in the sunlight and leaving the smell of factories in its wake.

Piper sat there for a moment, stunned, and then surged to her feet, swaying. She turned and looked at the other end of the room and saw that it was empty. Startlingly, barrenly empty, as if a trace of the creature that had vanished out of the broken-down door still moved there like a ghost.

It was gone.

"Are you alright?" a voice asked, a hand coming down gently on her shoulder.

Piper jumped and whirled around and stared into an impassive black visor set in the red helmet, wrought in the shape of a lion.

She blinked., feeling for the first time the pain in her throat and lungs. "No," Piper said bluntly. "I don't think so. You're Cole aren't you?" She coughed suddenly, the burning smell of the smog stinging her throat like salt water- how much of that stuff had she breathed in?

The fact that her lungs felt scrapped wasn't a good sign.

She was too preoccupied by that fact to notice the shocked silence that answered her words- or the glances between the red ranger and the yellow one.

"How do you know that?"

"My parents-" she coughed again, this time more violently. Her vision flickered.

"Cole, she needs help," said a female voice- soft, young, soprano.

"We should take her with us," said another voice- a male one, quiet but firm.

"The other org-" Piper began.

"There's another org?" that was Cole, holding her shoulders, sounding anxious. "Where? Did you see it?"

Confusion settled in the fog that was stealing over her brain. "Didn't _you _see it? It was right behind-"

Air seemed to spill out of her lungs. Everything went black- inevitably, invasively black- and the last thing Piper registered was the ground rushing up to meet her as she lost consciousness.


End file.
